Frame Rates - iStopMotion

To make the object move fast you have to use less frames and have less frame time. We did this with coins, at first it was slow when piling up but when the coins were moving it was fast.


In the one where the hand is doing press-ups we took lots of frames and therefore it was very slow.


Frame Rates change depending on what they're for, like for films they're usually 24fps (Frames Per Second) but in TV they're usually 25fps or 30fsp.

Zoetrope

A Zoetrope is a device that enables us to animate without the use of electricity. The first one was made in 1833 although there has been evidence people have used similar methods to animate.

As the device spins the slits block out the image for a fraction of a second, this makes our brain try and add up what it missed in that small time, so when the image changes our brain consequently thinks it's moving.

Zeotropes use the Phi Phenomenon which is "the optical illusion of perceiving continuous motion between separate objects viewed rapidly in succession" which means that we connect up the separate images so with zeotropes it appears like the image is moving.

We had to make our own animation strip. The first was just a simple bouncing ball. To make it I had to draw the first, middle and last frame first as these are the key frames, which is the basics of what is happening. Then I drew the rest of the frames so it's a smoother movement.

The second was my own choice and I decided to draw a man pulling a funny face. It's important the first and last image match because the image loops so it makes it connect.

When I tried it at first it was blurry because the pencil lines weren't strong enough, so I drew over it in pen which made it work.

List of Animations

1. Toy Story
2. Wallace and Gromit - A favourite of mine, we had them recorded on tape and for some reason it was always a big occasion when we used to watch it.
3. Naruto
4. A Bugs Life
5. Snow White
6. Pingu - This is a particular favourite of mine as I used to watch it as a child and I loved it, hearing the theme tune brings me back to the '90s!
7. Corpse Bride
8. Frankanweenie
9. Fireman Sam
10. Pokemon
11. Wreck it Ralph
12. Sonic the Hedgehog
13. Cinderella
14. Adventure Time
15. Ice Age - I remember getting the video tape of this film and watching it for the first time and loving it!
16. Shrek - Another film I remember seeing for the first time. I went to the cinema with my family and I remember being really proud before the film that I remembered what we going to see
17. Family Guy
18. American Dad
19. ASDF Movies
20. Edds World
21. South Park
22. Wall-E
23. 101 Dalmations
24. The Lion King - I don't ever remember a time I didn't watch the lion king, it's still one of my favourite films and will always have a special place in my heart!
25. Mona the Vampire
26. Brave
27. The little Mermaid
28. Ed, Edd and Eddy
29. Kim Possible
30. Phineas and Ferb
31. The Power Puff Girls
32. Spirited Away
33. Scooby Doo
34. Up
35. The Mighty Boosh
36. Cars
37. Pocahontis
38. Ponacio
39. Bambi
40. Arasticats
41. Sleeping Beauty
42. Finding Nemo
43. Beauty and the Beast
44. Mickey Mouse
45. Monsters Inc
46. Mulan
47. Star Wars
48. Cramp Twins
49. Dragon Ball Z
50. My little pony
51. Zombie Load
52. Summer Wars
53. The Incredibles
54. Fairly Odd Parents
55. Horrid Henry
56. Resident Evil
57. Recess
58. Dexters Lab
59. Fosters Home for Imaginary Friends
60. Elliot Kid
61. Futuramma
62. The Simpsons
63. Black Cat
64. Fairy Cube
65. Kaichou Wa Maid Sama!
66. Gantz
67. Evenelegon
68. PSG
69. BFG (The Film)
70. Avatar - The Last Air Bender
71. Avatar
72. XX Holic
73. MM!

List five different application of animation:

• Film
• TV
• Music Video
• Advertisement
• Channel Ident

Task 4 - Unit 26

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Task 3 - Unit 26

Andrea Arnold - Unit 26

Task 2 - Unit 26

WOW - News International

WOW -News International

What is it's parent company?

It's parent company is News Corporation which is owned by Rupert Murdoch and his family. News Corporation own many things such British Sky Broadcasting Group plc.

What do they produce?

They produce the times, the sunday times and the sun (between January and June 2012 the paper had an average daily readership of approximately 7.3 million) which are all major newspapers in the UK. They also owned New of the World but it stopped publishing after phone hacking scandals.

What do they own?

They own the times, the sunday times and the sun. The physical newspaper of it but also the online versions.

Global Impact

The newspaper News of the World basically started the Leveson Inquiry after hacking into peoples phones (mostly famous people) and publishing their private lives. They were also blackmailing famous people into doing things, such as making Charlotte Church perform for a wedding to not get bad publicity. The Leveson Inquiry has yet to reveal it's findings but is impacting the freedom of newspapers.

Also owning three of the UKs major newspapers mean they can influence the country, if all three newspapers had a headline about how they dislike the green party, for example, then this would make their readers agree and even make other newspaper join in on the bandwagon.

Task 1 Unit 26

Short Film Reviews

Short films are a way for film directors to test their creativity in film making but to a smaller scale. This means everything has to be taken into consideration, like each frame and the words people are saying because if it’s not important it could take up valuable time.

The two films telling lies and soft are both directed by Simon Ellis. And although they have different storylines and different characters they are actually quite similar in theme.

Telling Lies is about a man who has broken up with his girlfriend and is talking to different people on the phone about it. We never see anyones faces all we are presented with is their voice and a transcript of the phone conversation, although the fonts are different and move according to the tone of voice.

Telling lies has the theme of the viewer knowing more than what the characters do, this is the case in most films but telling lies takes this to a whole new level. When the person is telling the lie the truth comes up on the screen in a white and bold font, it’s over what they are actually saying which gives the audience a perspective of both sides of the story.

Soft is about a father and son who are being bullied by a gang. It shows their relationship and how they cope differently to the same situation.

In soft this happens again but in a not so obvious manner, we see the dad get knocked over by the gang, and we can see the fear in his eyes, so when he tells his son he’s not scared we know he is lying. But since it doesn’t come up on the screen in big bold letters we still have that same doubt his son feels, which makes us more emotionally involved with the sons character.

While both films have a dark side to it telling lies lies under the category of comedy, it’s like a newer and better version of a pantomimes “he’s behind you” joke, we know he’s behind you (or lying) but the other person doesn’t.

Soft on the other hand has a much darker and more serious side to it. The gang in it are never seen to have a empathetic side to them so as the viewer we just see them as the ‘bad guys’, this gives the audience a disconnection from these people and therefore like the other people in the film we are also scared of them, we don’t know what their lives are behind hanging around on the streets and if they’re pressured into doing what they are doing. And neither does the father so it makes the audience relate to his coward behaviour.

However, when we hear the dad telling his son that he should have fought the bullies he was confronted by earlier, it turns him into a hypocrite and that audience connection to him is lost.

A similarity of the two films is status. In telling lies the characters Phil and Sarah were together, then both slept with other people. Now that they’re calling each other it’s like they want to hurt the other person more. In this case Phil is hurt more because his friend Darren has also betrayed him, which leaves Sarah on top of him in status.

In soft on the other hand status is coming from lots of different aspects of life. The father and son are both middle class, you can see this from their house, they also have a car and the son plays cricket. But the gang is working class, again you can tell from their clothes and the way they speak, so technically the father and son should have a higher status than them. But because the gang use violence and humiliation it makes them higher in status as people are scared of them.

Both films are made to make the audience relate to the characters, in telling lies people can relate to lying on the phone to people to cover up what really happened, or to pretend to be better. And in soft we can empathise with how the son is feeling after his father is sending him mixed messages.

In conclusion I think both films were creative and a joy to watch. I prefered telling lies because I have never seen a short film where it’s just the transcript of a phone conversation, and it’s hard to make an audience engage with that but it did and it was fun to watch.

My Favourite Film Review

Mean Girls

Mean Girls, a film about the social cycle of what a teenage girl goes through in a year. On the outside this film seems like your average chick flick but it has so many more levels to do with sexism, social norms and friendship, which is why it’s my favourite film.

The film is about a teenager called Cady, who starts [high] school for the first time after a life of being home schooled in Africa. It shows her learning about what school is all about and popular culture etc.

The theme the film touches upon the most is the rules around school. Cady has to learn the social rules of school, she’s spent her life with her parents so she doesn’t know what not to do, when she mentions she likes Regina’s Ex boyfriend Gretchen says “ex-boyfriends are just off limits to friends. I mean that's just like the rules of feminism”, which is something Cady did not originally know, she also has to wear certain clothes on certain days, like pink on a Wednesday, to be apart of “the plastics”.

The film was written by Tina Fey, who also played the teacher, and I think her role in the film is to be the voice of reason. She gives a speech near the end of the film which is clearly her own views and I  think it brings a nice touch to the film because what she is saying has a lot of meaning behind it and it will make teenage girls watching the film think about how they act.

One thing she says in the film is “you all have got to stop calling each other sluts and whores. It just makes it ok for guys to call you sluts and whores” which I completely agree on and I think it’s good she’s using this film to say something of such importance about feminism. She also gives advice in the film such as “you don't have to dumb yourself down in order for a guy to like you” which I think is nice because lots of young people will be watching the film and this could actually help them.

Mean Girls is very similar to real life, we only know about the characters from the school. We never see them at home and what their families are like, we don’t even know who’s in their families, and this reflects real life because at school we only see what happens there. We don’t even know about everyone in our class and this film accurately represents that.

I love comedy, watching it, reading it and even writing it. And Mean Girls is the only film I can watch over and over again and it still makes me laugh. There are many classic quotes from the film that are all over the internet in memes and parodies such as “Coach Carr, step away from the underage girls!” and “she doesn’t even go here”. I can guarantee everyone who has watched the film can at least say one quote from it because it’s so memorable.

While many may think Mean Girls is a film restricted to teenage girls I would strongly disagree and say it’s a film for everyone to enjoy. Every knows the experience from school and social rules they’ve had to follow and this film is about that, so everyone can enjoy. The humor is also not restricted to teenage girls, again it’s something everyone can find funny.

In conclusion Mean Girls is my favourite film because it’s funny, it’s full of great quotes and it has good morals in it such as be yourself and do not think you have to act in a certain way to be popular. I think it’s great that a good film is so successful and it’s affected teenagers all over the world.

Advert Evaluation

My advert was very faithful to the original idea, we followed our storyboard and script closely and this resulted in a successful shoot. We did change one scene on the storyboard to a postman as we had the jacket, but it wasn't changing it very dramatically and if anything it made the advert more diverse.

Our idea was to make a hard sell advert aimed at working class uneducated adults between the ages of 30-40. We wanted to make our advert information packed and to show a range of different characters and scenes to keep it interesting. We chose the company supersavers because 2/3 of us in the group wear glasses, and it's an issue that you cannot really avoid. We brought in the 'free eye test' because if someone goes to the free eye test and finds they need glasses, they will most definitely buy from specsavers.

I think we were quite successful in communicating to the target audience. Our target audience was working class adults aged between 30-45. In the advert we showed people who could be working class, like the postman, so having those people in our adverts makes the viewer think of them as themselves. We are are also aiming at uneducated people, so people who did go to school but maybe didn't so well and didn't go to university, and in our advert we were very clear on our ideas and didn't over complicate things which suits our target audience.

I'm very proud of the green screen we used on the postman scene and laboratory scene, it took a lot of effort to move the green screen into the TV studio and to actually edit it, so when it worked I was thrilled. I'm also proud of the different characters I was able to portray. I think the music we used was uplifting and bouncy which suited the tone of the advert, and the editing was smooth.

In the professional supersavers advert they have a comedy element to the advert, as the man is in the wrong place. And I think in our advert we also have a comedy element as it's a bit cheesy, but having a funny advert means people remember it and it makes the company seem fun and lighthearted, so we succeeded in projecting that image. 

The professional advert it very simple, whereas ours isn't complicated but it has a lot more action and scenes in it, which I think in some ways is better because it's sending a clear message rather than a message you have to assume.

Advert